The Merchant Salazkin and the Writer F. D.

Published:Severnaya PravdaNo. 26, September 1, 1913.

      Signed:Para-conciliator.

      Published according to theSevernaya Pravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages340-342.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thespeech delivered by the merchant Salazkin is undoubtedly of great
social significance. Gone for ever is that historical epoch, the epoch of
“primitive accumulation”, in which the landed nobility grumbled and
appealed for “faith”, and the merchant bowed and expressed his gratitude.

Gone,too, is the first period of the June Third, counter revolutionary
epoch, when the merchant, terrified to death by the movement of the masses,
gazed upon Stolypin with admiration and tender emotion. The second period
has begun, the period of working-class upswing, “social” revival and
merchant liberalism.

Acorrect appraisal of this liberalism, something between Octobrism and
the Cadet Party, is to an increasing extent beingforced(by the
course of events) evenuponpetty-bourgeois
democrats.Severnaya Pravdarecently quoted the just arguments ofKievskaya Mysl(seeSevernaya PravdaNo. 9,[1]August 11) on theseparationof liberalism from democracy, on therapprochementbetween the liberalism of the Cadets—to say
nothing of the “Progressists”—and reactionary nationalism.

Thereare, however, some writers who lag behind even petty-bourgeois
democracy because they are held in bondage by their own opportunist
doctrine. At the head of these writers, of course, stands the liquidator
F. D.

Inhis appraisal of Salazkin’s speech, F. D. wrote (Novaya
Rabochaya Gazeta, August 23) that the Black Hundreds were right to
raise an outcry against Salazkin, “but theLeft-wing [meaning liberal] press was also right in pointing out the
organic inability of the bureaucracy to meet the pressing requirements of
the country.Rossiyaalone was not right.”

“Salazkin’sspeech is not to be explained by love for
   radical programmes,” says F. D., “but by the absence of law and
   order. The merchant has revolted.... And if such is the case, no matter how
   hostile the merchant may be towards radical programmes he will be
   compelled, if not today then tomorrow, to combine his efforts with those of
   the more radical sections of the country.”

“Salazkin’sspeech is not to be explained by love for
   radical programmes,” says F. D., “but by the absence of law and
   order. The merchant has revolted.... And if such is the case, no matter how
   hostile the merchant may be towards radical programmes he will be
   compelled, if not today then tomorrow, to combine his efforts with those of
   the more radical sections of the country.”

Suchis F. D.’s appraisal. He goes no further than combining liberalism
with the workers.

Veryoriginal! F. D. does not notice the combination of the efforts of
the merchant with those of the Black-Hundred landowner. He does not notice
that Salazkin is upholding the “fundamentals” of the June Third regime
and within the framework of those fundamentals wants to push Purishkevich
into the background.

Nordoes he notice the difference between thereformistposition of the liberals and Salazkin, and the position of the working
class, which is alien to the wretched narrowness of reformism. The writer
F. D. has overlooked the substance of the present difference between
democracy and liberalism.

F.D.is interested inone thing alone—“combining” the
liberals and the workers. An interesting ... speciality!

RegardF. D.’s article as a political document, regard it from the
“all-Europe” point of view (for, indeed, F. D. and his friends are fond
of talking about their Europeanism...). You will see that F. D. shares in
full the position of Lloyd George and the extreme opportunists of the
“workers’ party” (on a British scale); or the position of Combes and
Jaurès (on a French scale); or the position of theBerliner
Tageblatt, the organ of the Left liberals in Berlin, and of Bernstein,
Kolb and Vollmar.

Thereis nothing in F. D.’s article that is unacceptable to a Left
Cadet who is doing his best “to combine” “the efforts of the Salazkins
with those of the more radical sections of the country”.

TheMarxist tells the workers—take advantage of the disagreement
between the Salazkins and the Purishkeviches by neutralising the
vacillation of the Salazkins, who aremuch more closely “combined” with the Purishkeviches than with the
opposition. The liberal tells the workers—the Salazkins will be compelled
to combine their efforts with yours.

Howcomes it that the writer F. D. forgot to explain the class roots of
the reformism of the liberals in general and of Salazkin in particular? How
did F. D. even forget to point out the whole absurd, ridiculous, ugly
narrowness of the reformism of Salazkin-type merchants under Russian
conditions?

Wasit not because the writer,despitehis Marxist
“signboard”, upholds the very same reformist point of view that the
merchant Salazkin holdsin conformitywith the interests of his
class and his progressist, i.e., semi-Octobrist, signboard?

[1]Seepp. 302–04 of this volume.—Ed.